Questions To Ask Before Choosing HOA Maintenance Software

Streamlining maintenance is one of the most critical activities in community management. Managers aim to increase the public appeal of the community and ensure the safety of its staff and residents. The right technology can help managers not only achieve but optimize those goals. As you research HOA maintenance software options for your community, ask vendors these 5 questions.

1. Can residents submit maintenance requests?

Providing residents with a way to self-service and be notified about important things relating to their unit and the community increases engagement and builds trust. When a resident identifies a maintenance issue in their unit or within an area that lies within the HOA or condo’s responsibility to fulfill, they need a way to inform management of it.

Can your residents…

Submit work order tickets about their unit or common areas
Add pertinent details about the issue
Select access preference – Does the resident want to be at the property when the maintenance personnel arrives?
Receive updates on when the issue was resolved
View a history of all the tickets they have submitted & the status of each.

2. Can you manage maintenance tickets from start to finish?

A robust work order management system should not only provide managers with the ability to create tickets but to streamline them from start to end. Managers should be able to triage tickets when they come in or are created, know the status of each ticket, and collaborate with staff members.

Can your staff…

Create unit level or common area tickets
Add pertinent details and attachments
Categorize and prioritize the ticket
Assign a ticket to another manager, staff member, vendor, or yourself
Automatically notify the assignee of the new ticket
Change status or comment on the ticket.

3. Can you gain high-level insights on maintenance operations?

Community managers need access to high-level and granular data to understand their operations and make better-informed decisions. Through the HOA maintenance software, managers should be able to easily identify the number of tickets open/closed per month, their staff’s workload, the tickets that have not been worked on for a long time, and how many tickets each vendor is working on. Managers should be able to easily capture this information for a specific community or across their entire portfolio. In Pilera’s maintenance system, managers receive an automated report with all the tickets that haven’t been touched for 30 days. This insight is essential for managers to handle the workload of their staff and vendors, prioritize work, and ensure that nothing falls off their radar.

4. Can you search for resident data quickly?

When a resident calls, emails, or walks into the management office to report a maintenance issue for their unit, you need to quickly search through your resident listing to create the ticket. An HOA maintenance software should have a robust search capability. Searching by partial names or addresses, a resident’s unit, email, or phone number will save managers and staff members time if they are managing hundreds of tickets.

5. Can you maintain a vendor database effectively?

Building good relations with your vendors is crucial to the upkeep of your community or apartment complex. As a manager, you need to know which vendors are approved to work for certain communities, the services they can provide, when their COIs are expiring, how you’ve rated their services, and how to keep in touch with them for new projects.

Can managers…

Track contact information, addresses, and maintenance personnel information
Assign vendors to categories such as entry management, landscaping, plumbing, and more
Automatically notify vendors of the new maintenance tickets assigned to them
Assign vendors to work for multiple communities at once
Rate vendors so you know who your preferred contractors are

Using the right technology when it comes to managing maintenance projects can make all the difference in contributing to communities that are well-run, safe, happy, and look good. It’s essential to ask these five major questions when researching maintenance software options so that you can give your staff the best tools.

About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. May we help your community achieve these success stories? Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.